Leftist Ha'aretz Newspaper Attempts to Paint Israeli Jews as Racist

Just the other day, Ha’aretz, the leftist Israeli newspaper, gleefully quoted a poll by a group called Dialog to substantiate its belief that Israelis favor an apartheid state. The survey, conducted by Dialog on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, “exposes anti-Arab, ultra-nationalist views espoused by a majority of Israeli Jews,” Gideon Levy, an avowed foe of the Israeli Right, alleged. In an accompanying op-ed, Levy continued, “We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel. It’s good to live in this country, most Israelis say, not despite its racism, but perhaps because of it.”

But Avi Mayer, from Storify.com, wanted to delve a little deeper. He approached a number of the organizations and individuals involved in commissioning the survey, including Professor Amiram Goldblum, who is active in various left-wing causes and has signed a number of controversial petitions and was one of those who commissioned the survey.

Goldblum shared the full information with Mayer; there were 17 questions presented to 503 individuals, who were divided into groups: secular, traditional, religious, haredi (ultra-Orthodox), and “Russian” (immigrants from the former Soviet Union).

Levy had written:

“The majority doesn’t want Arabs to vote for the Knesset, Arab neighbors at home or Arab students at school. Let our camp be pure – as clean of Arabs as possible and perhaps even more so.”

A majority? One-third of the Jewish public wants a law barring Israeli Arabs from voting for the Knesset.

42 percent don’t want to live in the same building with Arabs, but 53% do.

42 percent don’t want their children in the same class with Arab children. But 49% do.

33% of Jewish Israelis believe Israeli Arabs should be prevented by law from voting for the Knesset. But a much larger majority of 59% — including 77% of secular Israelis, 51% of traditional Israelis, and 44% of religious Israelis — oppose this.

Levy claimed:

A sweeping 74 percent majority is in favor of separate roads for Israelis and Palestinians in the West Bank. A quarter – 24 percent – believe separate roads are “a good situation” and 50 percent believe they are “a necessary situation.”

The truth? 67% of Jewish Israelis say separate roads in the West Bank are “not good.” Of that 67%, the 50% who say there is “nothing to be done” are not endorsing “segregation,” as Levy slants it, but rather acknowledging that there is no choice under present circumstances. As the Ministry of Justice reported in 2007, restrictions on Palestinian travel in the West Bank have prevented hundreds of terror attacks.

And apartheid? Levy wrote:

“We’re racists, the Israelis are saying, we practice apartheid and we even want to live in an apartheid state. Yes, this is Israel.”

He quoted this statistic: 69 percent of Jewish Israelis object to giving 2.5 million Palestinians the right to vote if Israel annexes the West Bank.

Levy conveniently forgot one thing. Numerous polls show that a strong majority of Israelis oppose annexing the West Bank, from 58% all the way up to 67%, thus making the question of what to do with annexation contingent on a patently false assumption.

Levy had also claimed that the poll was done under the auspices of the New Israel Fund, which vehemently denied the charge.

The damage the Israeli Left consistently does by trumping up false charges against their own homeland which can be used by the enemies of Israel is enormous. It does seem to ring a bell – the same bell that goes off when the American Left dumps on America.